ive been reading around these forums and a lot of people seem to be having problems with the new imac, seems like they are in and out of the shop. i must say these posts are very discouraging... however the fact that these computers are less likely to be infected with malware helps me...

what other reasons are there (besides cosmetics) for me to switch from PC to Mac? thanks for the help.

No doubt other Mac owners will contribute their opinions, but I'd like to set a bit of perspective for you. These forums are intended for people to come here and post their problems, so by nature what you're going to see will indeed be problems. The many thousands of iMac owners who are having no troubles have little reason to post to a technical support bulletin board, so just reading here will give you a skewed perspective on the issues. Quoting another regular contributor to the Discussions, "Trying to judge Macs by this forum is like trying to judge the health of a community by looking at the hospital ER".

There can be problems with any system and yours could fail at some point. The strong likelihood, though, is that you'll have no problems with your system whatsoever, particularly if you take care to give it a proper environment - low static, high quality power protection (no $15 hardware store special surge protectors), etc. - power problems are the number one cause of chronic computer problems. I've owned at least eleven Macs over the years, and have only had a hardware problem with one (a bad hard drive in a Mac SE more years ago than I care to admit).

As to reasons to switch, here are a few (all of which come standard with any Mac):

lucifuge,You really should post a new topic with your question as it is not the same issue as the original poster raised. That way you will get an answer that more suits your needs.

But just to give my opinion:

Coming here to make a decision as to whether to purchase a Mac is kind of like going to a hospital and looking for well people. The reason for this forum is that people do have problems and come here for help. People generally don't come here to tell you how great things are but because something is not so great. Think of the number of posts you see here versus the 25-30 million or so Macs that are out there and I think you will come up with a number that is very low.

Apple has a solid reputation as some of the best quality hardware on the market today. they consistently receive high marks for quality of service also.

I have owned Macs for many many years and have found them to be very reliable.

We have 12 iMac Core Duos where i work for over 2 months and none of them has had any problems so far. There will always be a small percentage of buyers who will always have problems, especially with new techonology like this. But that number is very low compared to overall units out there.

i do understand that this is a forum for "sick people" haha i love the ER analogy, but i am reading reviews all over the internet and this board...i just want to educate myself before i jump into a mac... i do however like what i see, and i plan on purchasing one shortly. mostly because of this forum. a friend of mine has one with no problems as of yet.

thanks for the support and great responses.

another question i have on basic usability is: if i were to save something to a floppy disc on a PC could the mac read it? or the other way around?

"i do understand that this is a forum for "sick people" haha i love the ER analogy,"

I was hoping you would find the humor in that statement, yet there is truth to it.

"if i were to save something to a floppy disc on a PC could the mac read it? or the other way around?"

They still put floppies on PC's? Wow. I thought it was a dead technology.

Apple quit puttying floppies on Macs when the original iMac came out. You can buy an external floppy drive and it should be able to read one from a PC. Writing is another matter as I don't know if an external floppy will support the formatting needed. I haven't used a floppy in so long it isn't even funny. I mean with CD's costing 12 cents or so why bother with a floppy?

I believe that the Apple store even carries one but I did not check. You might check there and see if they have them.

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